Brian Leiter and Scott Shapiro: "Even Further Beyond the Hart-Dworkin Debate"

This past weekend, John P. Wilson Professor of Law Brian Leiter took part in a Bloggingheads.tv "diavlog" with Yale's Scott Shapiro entitled "Even Further Beyond the Hart-Dworkin Debate." The entire conversation is embedded below, or you can jump to individual topics here: 

• A short primer on legal philosophy (06:06)
• Hart’s legal positivism vs. Dworkin’s (quasi-)natural law theory (13:45)
• Explaining theoretical disagreement: a challenge for positivism (16:56)
• Is theoretical disagreement so rare it needs no explanation? (09:10)
• Can a novel way of interpreting law be offered in good faith? (11:34)
• Brian and Scott explain why they are positivists (05:28)        

Comments

[Alex Kolod]

Just a thought on your disagreement about theoretical disagreement:
When Prof. Leiter says that theoretical disagreement is really either disingenuous or mistaken, I take the mistake to be one about what law is, metaphysically. So, in his positivism, one is disingenuous if he realizes/believes that the law is based on consensus and still presents a theory that suggests, or assumes, otherwise. (I say "assumes" because this would be the case when a legal scholar/philosopher put forth a new interpretive theory claiming it to be descriptive. It cannot actually be descriptive if it is new.) One is mistaken if he suggest, or assumes, a theory that has sees some other basis (not consensus) as the source of law's authority. For that reason, it seems like the disingenuousness that Prof. Shapiro is talking about (based in self interest) is actually mistake for Leiter.